Hypoxia is correlated with the tumor immune microenvironment: Potential application of immunotherapy in bladder cancer

• Published in: Cancer medicine (Malden, MA) Vol. 12; no. 24; pp. 22333 - 22353
• Main Authors: Chen, Haotian, Zhang, Yao, Chen, Xingyu, Xu, Runshi, Zhu, Yuxing, He, Dong, Cheng, YaXin, Wang, Zhanwang, Qing, Xiang, Cao, Ke
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.12.2023; John Wiley and Sons Inc; Wiley
• Subjects: Algorithms; Biomarkers; Bladder cancer; Blood vessels; By products; Cells; Clustering; Gene expression; Hypoxia; immune checkpoint inhibitor; Immune checkpoint inhibitors; Immunofluorescence; Immunohistochemistry; Immunotherapy; Infiltration; Medical prognosis; Metabolism; Metabolites; Metastases; Phenotypes; Spatial distribution; TLR8; Tumor microenvironment; Tumors; hypoxia; TLR8; immune checkpoint inhibitor; tumor microenvironment; bladder cancer
• ISSN: 2045-7634; 2045-7634
• DOI: 10.1002/cam4.6617

Objective Hypoxia, which can considerably affect the tumor microenvironment, hinders the use of immunotherapy in bladder cancer (BLCA). Therefore, we aimed to identify reliable hypoxia‐related biomarkers to guide clinical immunotherapy in BLCA. Methods Using data downloaded from TCGA‐BLCA cohort, we determined BLCA subtypes which divide 408 samples into different subtypes. Tumor immune infiltration levels of two clusters were quantified using ssGSEA, MCPcounter, EPIC, ESTIMATE, and TIMER algorithms. Next, we constructed a hypoxia score based on the expression of hypoxia‐related genes. The IMvigor210 cohort and SubMap analysis were used to predict immunotherapeutic responses in patients with different hypoxia scores. Hub genes were screened using cytoscape, immunohistochemistry (IHC), and multispectral immunofluorescence were used to detect the spatial distribution of immune markers. Results Patients with BLCA were categorized into cluster1 (n = 227) and Cluster2 (n = 181). Immune infiltration and expression of immune markers were higher in Cluster1. Immune infiltration was also more obvious in the high‐hypoxia score group which related to a better predicted response to immunotherapy. IHC, and multispectral immunofluorescence confirmed the importance of TLR8 in immune infiltration and immune phenotype. Conclusions BLCA subtype can evaluate the infiltration of immune cells in the tumor microenvironment of different patients. Hypoxia score in this study could effectively predict immunotherapeutic responses in patients with BLCA. TLR8 may be a potential target for clinical immunotherapy.